François Périer, (10 November 1919 – 29 June 2002), born François Pillu in Paris, was one of France's most distinguished actors.
He made over 110 film and TV appearances between 1938 and 1996. He was also prominent in the theatre. Among his most notable parts was that of Hugo in the first production of Jean-Paul Sartre's Les Mains Sales in 1948. He was the French narrator in Fantasia .
Maria Margarethe Anna Schell (15 January 1926, Vienna – 26 April 2005, Preitenegg, Carinthia) was an Austrian/Swiss actress, who won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival in 1956 for Gervaise.
The daughter of a Swiss author and an Austrian actress, she was the older sister of actor Maximilian Schell, and lesser-known actors Carl Schell and Immy (Immaculata) Schell.
She starred in such films as Dr. Holl (1951), So Little Time (1952), The Heart of the Matter (1953), Gervaise (1956), Le notti bianche (1957), Rose Bernd (1957), The Brothers Karamazov (1958) playing the role of Grushenka, The Hanging Tree (1959), Cimarron (1960), and Superman (1978). She played Mother Maria in the sequel to Lilies of the Field called Christmas Lilies of the Field. She starred opposite such actors as Yul Brynner, Marcello Mastroianni, Suzy Delair, Gary Cooper and Marlon Brando. She also had five guest appearances in the television series, Der Kommissar and Derrick: Yellow He (1977) & Klavierkonzert (1978). Her final public appearance was at the premiere of her brother Maximilian's documentary film, My Sister Maria (2002). She starred in the 1976 Broadway play Poor Murderer.
Suzy Delair (born 31 December 1917) is a French actress and singer. She's one of the most famous movie stars of the french cinema and one of the latest movie legends.
Born in Paris, Delair acted in films directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, Jean Dréville, Jean Grémillon, Marcel L'Herbier, Christian-Jaque, Marcel Carné, Luchino Visconti, René Clément and Gérard Oury.
For several years,[vague] Delair was the companion of French film director Henri-Georges Clouzot.
René Clément (French pronunciation: [klemɑ̃]; March 18, 1913 – March 17, 1996) was a French film director and screenwriter.
Clément studied architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts where he developed an interest in filmmaking. In 1936, he directed his first film, a 20 minute short written and featuring Jacques Tati. Clément spent the latter part of the 1930s making documentaries in parts of the Middle East and Africa. In 1937, he and archaeologist Jules Barthou were in Yemen making preparations to film a documentary, the first ever of that country and one that includes the only known film image of Imam Yahya.
Almost ten years passed before Clément directed a feature but his French Resistance film, La Bataille du rail (1945), gained much critical and commercial success. From there René Clément became one of his country's most successful and respected directors, garnering numerous awards including two films that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the first in 1950 for The Walls of Malapaga (Au-delà des grilles) and the second time two years later for Forbidden Games (Jeux interdits). Clément had international success with several films but his star-studded 1966 epic Is Paris Burning?, written by Gore Vidal and Francis Ford Coppola and produced by Paul Graetz was a costly box office failure.
Jean Desailly (August 24, 1920, Paris – June 11, 2008) was a French actor. He was a member of the Comédie-Française from 1942 to 1946, and later participated in about ninety movies.
Desailly was married to the French actress Simone Valère.